As promised, after much frantic bug fixing and patching, we now have a first demo of the card game with a little bit of the event system and inventory as well.

So have a go and please do let us know your thoughts.

Cheers!

The demo should download as a zip file, you simply need to unzip it and it comes out as a Thea 2: The Shattering folder, and within, you'll find the Thea 2 unity icon to click.

It takes a few seconds for the demo to load, so stay with it.

After each demo run is done, it will exit to desktop and you need to restart it to play again.

We do recommend reading the handy tutorial situated on your left when you first start ;)

Hope you have fun!

All conflicts in Thea 2 will be resolved via the tactical card minigame. The game is an immersive, challenging experience where your people as well as the enemy you face, become the card decks.
As with Thea 1, the sequel will have different types of challenges to resolve problems, so that brute force is not the only way. There are three challenge types, Physical, Spiritual and Mental, and those three are also broken down into two subcategories – vs enemy or vs concept. Unlike Thea 1, in Thea 2 enemies will have a favoured challenge type and will attack you with it – so not always with brawn!

As with Thea 1, the basic idea of the card game is to set up the cards on the table, then resolve the challenge and repeat until a winner emerges, or one side surrenders.

Also continuing Thea’s tradition, your people become your card deck and your enemies become the opposing hand. As such, any injuries or effects from the card game may carry on afterwards (physical wounds can kill, illness will persist until healed etc)

Characters’ equipment, skills and stats will have direct impact on what is available in the challenge (But different skills will count for different challenge types, so strength is key for physical, but not for mental etc).

Some of the fancy new stuff:

Play one character many times! - Your characters become your cards, but you will now be able to play one character’s skills multiple times. (Note that the duplicate card will attack separately but it will still take damage as one, after all, it is still that one character!)

Melee and ranged rows. – As with Thea 1 we do have a melee/support skills, but this time it is more dynamic and does not split your hand into two, but allows you to play different skills as needed (no more losing your best fighter because he went to the support hand!).

Skills, spells, god intervention – Thea 2 will introduce a vast array of skill sets, but also summons, spells and even divine intervention, all making the card game much more exciting.

More control! – We’ve designed the mechanics to give players greater control over the challenges. You will now have such stats as action points (each skill and/or card has AP cost to play) and initiative delay stat, that allows you to determine when your character will act.

Setup initiative (who goes first in the preparation phase) is determined randomly.

The battlefield is split into two rows for each side (Melee and Ranged)

The first line, Melee, is used to play the frontline characters, like warriors in a Physical Challenge. This line will deal and receive most damage.

The second line, Ranged, provides support. You can play the same character multiple times, so even if you only have one, you can set them up on both lines to ensure victory.

The challenge begins with a preparation phase. This phase always lasts 4 cycles for each side. During these cycles, you play your character cards and chose skills or cast spells to set up for the fight.

Once a card is placed on the table, these choices cannot be changed.

Cards are deployed on the table in turns during the preparation phase. After 4 cycles of deployment the fight stage (where the combat is resolved) begins.

After the preparation phase comes the fight stage (made up of two rounds), where the cards are played against each other and depending on the outcome, the next step is determined. If one of the sides is not beaten, the setup cycle will be repeated until one side loses all cards or surrenders.

Every character card has skills. The basic attack skill allows you to play the card in the Melee line and attack the opponent closest to you.

Each card/skill has action point (AP) cost. You can stack your action points during setup to spend on more expensive skills (not yet available in the demo) or play strongest character multiple times.

You gain action points in every setup cycle up to the value of 7 AP. You do not have to spend them straight away.

You can also play the same card more than once, but the cost of playing it will rise each time.

The fight stage will commence according to initiative seen in the initiative queue on the right-hand side of the screen.

Character’s initiative depends on their Wits attribute, Delay of the skill used and preparation stage’s phase.

Skills are assigned either to the character or to an item. Their effectiveness however, is dependant mostly on the character’s attributes. So, if a skill uses Perception, it will be the character’s perception attribute that determines how well the skill worked.

Shout-outs!

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - Classic Turn-based Tactical RPG, is another indie gem worth checking out. This game looks fun and they do have a demo to try out, so you can see if it's something you fancy.

Comments

Hi!
@N.Tony
I'm happy you like demo :) As for Mechanics, yes we will try to make it as smooth as possible but at the same time we plan to keep it engaging and varied. One of the issues with T1 was that characters were constrained to very few parameters which limited what they could and could not do very much, forcing us to have many creatures which are only scaled up variants of the earlier creatures. From the tests we have done already we think you should be able in the final game to get fairly intuitive play during challenges, especially if you will customize your team against those specific opponents.
This time though not every type of fight would be the same, some might offer armour piercing (true) damage while being slower or "glass-cannon" themselves, which you can counter by equipping light and fast, or supporting self with initiative modifying spells/skills. At other times you may encounter summoners who spawn many little creatures and area of effect skills would be much more important and possibly ability to target specific enemies on battlefield. Some enemies might be build for long battles and any defense or attack improving blessings and equipment might be at core of your tactics to win that smoothly. It very well might be that your expedition may be specialized in killing specific enemies and be mediocre against some other even in the same challenge type. Our new card game would allow you to join other players card battles or even combine some standing close enough nearby groups... and enemies would be allowed to do the same, therefore you may need sometimes to wait for a group to separate from their others before you attack them...
Some of the mechanic complexity comes from the fact that it would be completely moddable as well so players would be able to write custom races, items, creatures and skills down to their very specific mechanic and even the way they calculate damages or any other card changes...
I will forward all the interface suggestions to A'vee, we will try to make it as good as we can :)

@Gaelden & @Valentin
As for the card art style: Our previous artist had no time to collaborate with us with this project, and we have hundreds of the pictures ready, but if many of you think this is not as great as it should be we will consider our options, cannot promise anything though as the money as always is a constrain...

@TomG
Updated version of the demo should have an update on the performance side without downgrading quality (yet :D), I would love to hear if you feel that this is:
- no better
- a little better
- way better
- fixed :P

We will introduce card game a bit slower in final game and with more info, so hopefully players would be able to learn it. To be honest when we were watching players in Thea 1, an average player required about two times more time to understand what is going on than the time we have seen in Thea 2 which is very promising, but this is not our last word here, we do not strive for good... we aim for the best XD

@All Thank you for playing demo and your feedback, everything you say is read and processed. Not everything will change game, but we do game for you (and us, I have over 1000 hours in T1 :P) and we want it to be the best, not "just sold"...

I was wondering if I should write the feedback as an email, but maybe a public one would be better, in case people disagree, then you don't have to take this into account :D
I played the demo now 4 times (including an updated demo from Oct. 3), and here are my thoughts:

MECHANICS. Obviously, compared to Thea-1 combat, this one is more complex. In the first one you got a hang of the mechanics and after dozens of hours you started playing "in the zone", without processing every move, kind of on reflexes. I fear that for Thea-2 combat this will not be possible anymore, since you cannot plan ahead as much - placement of enemy cards almost always messes up both your move order and hit targets. This has several possible drawbacks - it may be still easy to win the fight, but it seems way harder now to minimize the damage. If you keep the punishment as severe as in Thea-1 (people dying from wounds), every battle will be very taxing on players, which will probably force you to have overall fewer conflicts per playthrough, since otherwise people will fatigue. But as conflicts were the main gameplay activity in Thea-1, you will either have to provide some alternatives, or keep it padded with low-stakes conflicts... Currently I can't think of a scenario which seems appealing to me, but maybe that's because I'm not a game designer...

INTERFACE. Honestly, it took a lot of time to get the hang of it. I still don't really understand the thing with attack values of weapons (I guess the ones in brackets are multiples of the weapon attack value and some hero stats?), and it took even more time to realize what the armor stats are. I would advise to at least redesign the health/armor icons to be more readable. For example, you can have a heart shape for health and a shield shape for armors, that are either filled with corresponding colors, or have the corresponding icon within its outline? Either way, I think what's missing in item comparison is a diablo-like tooltip on hover - one that will show with green and red arrows the changes to your stats if you were to put this item on.

Other than that, I liked the demo, even managed to keep everyone alive by the end of my 4th attempt :) The GUI is cute, and the card art is growing on me. Hopefully you'll keep showing some playable bits throughout the development. Good luck!

Superbacker

I wasn't expecting the card gameplay to be so different from Thea 1! After two runthroughs, I am pretty intrigued by the changes and the increased variations though.

I liked being able to control my card placement in the original (c'mon piercing damage!) so a bit thrown now that speed and a second round of actions is involved, plus splash damage didn't always do what I thought it was going to do. But trusting in you guys and what comes after the learning curve.

Superbacker

Superbacker

Hey. I've played the demo about 4 times to get the feel for it. Here's feedback...and why not do it in the way of old western movies?

THE GOOD: I actually liked it a lot, feels more tactical than the card minigame from Thea 1, less random and I love the different skills and the timing system (eg - each skill has a certain speed, different skills have different speeds and the speed rises with coming turns so if you want to do something fast, bring that person/skill up early. Especially that seems a much better tactical alternative to the Thea1 where you had to hold onto your "first strike" support cards to use them at the end and then the AI brought 3 of these to shatter all your tactical plans. Also the little indicators that show you which card is the same character but on two/three different spaces (and the fact you can use someone twice, but with higher time cost). Love that the skills depend on the weapon type.

THE BAD: I liked the minigame, took me about 1-2 games to fully get it even with reading only half of the tutorial (on purpose). However... I'm not saying that gamers are idiots, I am saying they are lazy (idiots). Prepare for a lot of ppl to complain how they don't understand the minigame and that it's too difficult just because nobody held their hand in the first seventeen fights. I'd add a proper, full, graphical tutorial with Theodore explaining the action points increase, what you can do with them (send the same guy in twice...), how they grow overtime (never mind that it's right there in the middle of the screen nicely displayed even with the time delta), how timing and positioning works, that different weapons have different attack patterns and that the order is displayed on the right the whole time which makes it easier to plan your moves.

THE UGLY: Again, I liked it a lot. The only thing I found a touch annoying was that the interface was a bit slow to respond and the final battle rounds were slow to show who hits whom. I would definitely love a swifter experience and possibility to speed the damage dealing up (50-150%). But I guess this was a demo and the only graphical option was "Fantastic". Btw - played this on a lappie i7, 16GB RAM, nVidia K620M and SSD drive

@MuHu Great news! In Thea 1, I always found non combat challenges less involving because "dying" in those didn't punish you. The idea of my characters leaving or event worst, becoming an enemy because you have lost a social challenge is terrifying and exciting at the same time.

Thanks for all the feedback guys!
Yeah, the card game will certainly require a better tutorial, but that's exactly where these early tests are essential, we get to hone in on the potential problem areas and see what we'r doing wrong/right.

@Guillame all challenge types will now have their damage and consequence. So mental damage may mean your character gets depressed and leaves even, spiritual will mean they lose faith and again, potentially abandon their god... this is all wip, so you'll have to bare with us, but that's the plan.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a large part of what made Thea's card resolution great. Sure, there's a lot of fiddling with filters to check stats, but before long you tended to memorize what your parties were good at.

This demo, though...while I'm sure I'll be able to handle the mechanics, I like to co-op with people who won't. I like the increased impact from how you choose to equip your party, but the extra layers (several skills per member, member placement not a function of turn order, bias towards smaller parties with the repeated card use making it worse for those who brute force combat) are going to make this a harder sell for the rest of my group.

I haven't played the first game at all and must say that for the most part I was very confused about what was going on. That might be Friday talking and maybe I rushed through the tutorial too fast. I definitely wouldn't mind a bit more handholding through the tutorial.

Superbacker

I'm really excited about the new system. I have a few questions.
1- Does losing a character in a physical challenge still be a RNG death after the battle?
2- Does losing a character in a spiritual or mental challenge will add debuff to character after the battle (unlike In Thea 1 where you didn't have any consequence)?
3- Is the 7AP just for the demo? Will it be possible to have more (or less) depending of your party/items?

Just finished the demo. I must say, I'm very excited about the new system! I can already see tons of possibilities on what can be done. Like big, tough, nasty monsters that take a base two action points, ranged combatants, staying out of the main fray, or cards that buff adjacent characters, and tons of other stuff. This new combat also feels like it will be able to handle bosses much better and provide a lot more personality to various monsters.

@Turk
That's how it's suppose to work. But you can't play the same card twice unless you have enough action point. first play cost one, second cost two. You'll know weather or not you can play them because the ones you can't play with be shaded red.

Superbacker

played the first Thea, got most of the achievements except What Fire. New system seem unnecessary complex , i actually have no idea what was happening and given it is a beta am not sure whether i was playing it wrong or the system was not working ( the shielding did not work ) and the AI seem to be able to play same cards in multiple places but i could not

Superbacker

New art looks beautiful and even old one had a heart in it. Hope you improve map interface, it looks way too robust in comparison. Also hope for better research tree ... love them, old one was barely making it. Dont know how much can be saw in demo, but the most frustrating thing about the old card game was AI of your party. I just hoped in more complex scenarios that for some reason AI will do stupid move or that your party wont do something painfully stupid. Both things happened way too often. Also, I felt cut that I couldn't check in advance how strong my gang is in comparison to opponent when choosing different approaches. At the game start and when getting new caravan members it was a blind guessing. Still, I very much enjoyed those mini-games.